Community wealth building, returning assets and land to community stewardship

Our Why
Life for many in the neighbourhood we live in has got worse rather than better over recent years, with housing and care being at the forefront of the decline. Seemingly as a community we have forgotten that it is our job to care for each other, instead opting to contract care out to a system. In our neighbourhood the local authority housing estate is predominantly owned by the private sector, extracting wealth and not looking after the people who live there. With 14,500 people on the social housing waiting list the need for an alternative is dire. The challenge was to restore care as a community function, and also, to bring housing and land and assets back into community ownership.

Our Idea
Can we become a self renovating neighbourhood and take a holistic approach to becoming self organising? Our existing work focuses on testing and trying out different ways of community governance that are circular and based on consensus decision making - which in turn creates job opportunities for people who may have been on the edge of systems previously. We currently work alongside young people in the area, securing a shipping container as a base for themselves in a park out of which they can play and organise.

Our vision is to bring back wealth into the neighbourhood and we have our sights set on a local pub which could be transformed into housing for women fleeing domestic abuse, and a church that could become a beautiful co-living community.